I saw this on Net Galley a few months ago and was very excited to be able to receive an advanced copy. I am a sucker for a good nostalgic book about one's youth. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish the book prior to its release. Plus, I ended up starting the book and then failing to finish it. Please do not let my hesitation over the completion of this book deter you from reading it. I really enjoyed it.

We follow our protagonist, Tallulah, home to help her family from whom she ran away years earlier. One of her brothers has been arrested for murder and she head home to try to help sort out what happened.

A good portion of the book is spent in the past. The author takes you through Tallulah's tumultuous childhood and the history of her family. The events leading up to her running away are exceptionally tragic but she manages to make it through as unscathed as one could be in those circumstances.

The book paints a detailed picture of life in a small southern town during a time of racial segregation. What was interesting to me was that since these scenes were written from a child's perspective, you're shown the innocence of children when It comes to race in general. The idea that children are taught bigotry is prevalent. Tallulah's best friend is a young black girl..but you wouldn't know it until you’re told it. Because from her perspective…that's just her best friend.

There is a small mystery to unravel with regards to the ancient family secrets and honestly, while it help world build, the author could have done without it. It's not necessary to the plot of the book itself to know what Tallulah's Grandmother's deep dark secret is.

Myth of Perpetual Summer shows that no matter how much things change, some things will always remain the same. It's an excellent book, rich in character and detail. If you want a good, quick read, this is a good choice.

The Favorite Sister was a weird one for me. I enjoyed a lot of it. I hated a lot of it. I ended in the middle of the road.

The plot follows five women throughout the filming process of the reality show that they are on called Goal Diggers. The premise of the show is meant to highlight modern businesswomen and their friendships. The concept of the show as laid out in the book gives you a behind the scenes feeling like you get while watching Unreal. It highlights the blurring of the lines of story vs. real life and how these shows are both scripted and no scripted.

What was strange to me was that based on the title, I thought we were going to explore the relationship between the two actual sisters in the novel, Kelly and Brett. Instead we explore sisterhood as an overall concept between women. In fact, there are very few men in this book at all.

As the season unfolds, we are treated to the knowledge that one of the characters was killed during the filming process. It was the how they got there part that irked me. Each of the characters is fully fleshed out and dynamic. There are no questions as to who these women are. The issue I had, however, is that you spend your entire reading experience believing that you know who these women are…only to find out all the secrets and lies they told along the way.

While I enjoyed the story, I struggled with the end. Even the more likeable characters turned out to be liars and manipulators. Since this was a novel of primarily women, I had a hard time with this being the end result. Every one had a fatal flaw; liar, fraud, drunk, murderer, etc. I'm all for flawed and dynamic characters, but when every single one is made to seem like a terrible person, I take issue with that.

That all being said, the author was able to create a world that I was fascinated with and I was hooked from the first few pages. Even though I was frustrated by the actions the characters took and the way these women were presented, I enjoyed the book overall.

Every year when I take my vacation in the woods, I take my Kindle and a stack of books to get through. Usually in a couple weeks I can clear anywhere from 7-10 books. How on earth do I do that? Well for starters, I pick brain candy books like the Future Will Be BS Free. These are the books that you find yourself realizing that you just don't have to think that hard while reading them. I decided on this one since I've been behind on my NetGalley reading lately.

The book takes place in a not too distant future in which America finds itself in some sort of Dystopian landscape controlled by what can only be described as the female version of Donald Trump. Here's where things start to grate the nerves. On page one. It's as though the author decided that he didn't want to potentially draw the parallel to Trump and had a "brilliant" notion to make the character a woman instead.

Six genius teenagers find themselves on the cusp of creating the ultimate lie detector test in the garage of their friend Rebe. This "truth app" which isn't an app at all (it's a ring) let's the wearer know exactly when someone is lying. It's somehow so specific that it can tell if I person is lying, even if the person is unaware of the subconsciousness of their own lie. Amazing! And barely believable. Soon, the kids are approached by a shadowy figure who wants to buy their research. When they decline, one of their group is mysteriously killed.

From there, everything goes crazy. The kids end up on the run with cybernetic super soldiers and causing a secondary civil war. Every time a dire situation pops up, they magically have the perfect solution. It's an entire group of Mary Sues. These kids take on the President, armies, hackers, vigilantes, torture, grave robbing, basic teenage angsty love, and everything else under the sun.

It's not that I hated it, I just found it to be ridiculous. The kids went from situation to situation with almost no preface. Poof! They are on the run. Poof! They have a facility built in order to create their truth app. Poof! The President is kidnapped. I also felt like there were just too many characters to keep track of. There are the six kids, three cybernetic soldiers, multiple bad guys, multiple people who assist them along the way. There's practically no character development. The names of the characters are a stretch even by my standards. The highlights? Rebe, Boob (so named because his dad was so excited he accidentally wrote an extra "O" on the birth certificate), Basquiat, Silhouette. I simply can't.

I guess the one thing I did like was the (relatively brief) descriptions of the world in which they were living. It could have been done in more detail but it's a compelling concept nonetheless. I liked the overall premise but I just wanted more. More detail, more likeable characters…just more. It wasn't awful but it wasn't awesome. Honestly, if you have something else to read, I would recommend doing so.

I've been trying to write this review since February when I failed to finish this book. The fact that I failed to finish it should tell you a lot about it. I got about half way through but just didn't care about the author's experiences. I thought that going into this book, I would enjoy it. A coming of age story in a time and place where people didn't do so readily? I'm in. Maybe I would have enjoyed this more if I listened to it as an audiobook.

I never felt the story unfolding. I always just felt like the author was telling a story he's told a million times. I never connected with the emotion of what should have been something incredibly intense. Somehow the book felt both cocky and whiny all at once. That alone is a relatively interesting thing to have accomplished in general.

As memoirs go, this one felt more like someone who people have been telling for years "OH EM GEE, you should TOTALLY write a memoir" when maybe they really shouldn't have. I really wanted to like this one. I wish that I had.

I'm beginning to think that my liking a book has to do with the mood I'm in. This book shouldn't have been called Little Disasters, it should have been called Terrible People.

I'll start out by saying that the writing itself is lovely. I felt fully immersed in the plot and the setting. You're transported to New York City and taken through the course of a few years in the life of the main four characters. The author has created full and vibrant characters for you to latch onto and relate to.

He did such an excellent job, that I ended up hating two of the characters. As in I wanted to crawl through the pages and just throttle them.

One downside to this entire experience were the flashbacks. I don't mind a decent flashback scene every once in a while, but there were countless ones in this novel. Sometimes flashbacks within flashbacks. It got to be a tad too much.

Spoilery plot points ahead
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The plot follows two couples who have babies on the same day. The fathers meet outside the hospital while awaiting the birth of their children. Both women, for reasons, have decided that the men are not allowed in the birthing room with them; that the births are things they as women should have all to themselves. I could unpack the misogyny of it all, but who has time for that?

We find out later that Paul and Jenny's child has died, while Michael and Rebecca's child has lived. This is told through flashback. During the present day there is some sort of potential terrorist attack on the city and both Michael and Paul are stranded and unable to get home.

But wait! Turns out that Jenny and Michael started an affair. End sympathies here. Jenny and Michael continue to be terrible people throughout the entire book. Carrying on literally in front of their spouses faces at once point. They finally decide to "do the right thing" and leave their spouses for each other. Try not to sprain your eyes with that eye roll. In case you were wondering just how awful they are? Michael feels basically ZERO guilt. Jenny? Well she has it in her head that the first time she cheated on Paul was her fault, but every other time he let her get away with it is somehow his fault.

See? Terrible people.

All in all, I'm going to end up giving this book 4 stars. I didn't care for the flashback aspect of how it was written. But ultimately, the author created vibrant characters for me to love, hate, and sympathize with, so that counts for something.

I've had a run of disappointing books lately and unfortunately this is one of them.

If you're anything like me (and I'm guessing you are since you took the time to be a member of Goodreads in the first place), you saw Circe on practically every website, book of the month club, review list, and magazine "must" list imaginable.

Assuming still that you're like me, you enjoy reading fictionalized versions or the Greek and Roman pantheon. No demi-god too big or small! It's all fair game and completely fascinating.

Side story: when I was in middle school, my English teacher had an entire six week course about the Greek and Roman pantheons. It's practically the only thing I even remember from middle school.

I bit the bullet and bought Circe from Book Depository. It was available quicker from other sellers but let's face it…I have a thing for paperbacks and I'd have to wait until next year in the US to get the book as one. Once it finally arrived, I dug in immediately.

Circe is about the naiad daughter of Helios, the sun god. It loosely follows her arc in Homer's Odyssey. When you get this books it's shiny and bronze and you're in love. By the end, you may have a general sense of disappointment. What did I waste my time on?

I think the author was trying to go for a story about a woman overcoming adversity, coming into her own, and finding her voice. What I feel like she ended up with, was a novel about a whiny child-woman who just accepts her fate and refuses to stand up for herself until literally the last 50-100 pages. Even the climax of the book is so mundane that you may miss it altogether. You'll be waiting for something bigger to happen.

This is not to say that the author's writing is bad. The plot is just seriously lacking in the meat that you are expecting. Most of the novel takes place on a deserted island to which Circe is banished so the setting can feel a little redundant.

Bottom line for me, it wasn't the worst thing I've ever read…but if you have something else catching your eye on the shelf…you may as well grab that instead.

This one gets 3 stars only because I can't give it 2.5. I know there are a ton of people who loved it, I'm just not one of them.

Oh boy. Have you read this one yet? You should. You absolutely should. I know that there are a lot of comparisons made with the Woman in the Window and novels like Gone Girl or the Girl on the train and they are completely understandable. This book has so many twists and turns that I couldn't even stop to think about what I was reading.

Usually for me, I skip to the last page of a mystery novel once I get to the central core of the mystery that's trying to be solved. I like to try and figure out how the author is going to get me there.

This novel had me so sucked in that I FORGOT TO DO IT. That's never ever happened to me before. I inhaled it.

The story follows a woman who is homebound due to extreme agoraphobia. She witnesses what she believes to be a murder while watching the world go by from her window. From here her small and safe little world begins to unravel as though pulling a stray thread from a sweater.

I will say that I figured out the end, but it wasn't long until the protagonist worked everything out as well. I only had a few pages on her revelations. Some of the surprises threw me off completely…in that "wait…WHAT?" sort of way.

I'm excited to see the forthcoming movie for this one. It's not a stretch to tell you that AJ Finn has a new fan in me.

I can't remember exactly where I saw a recommendation for this book. I was intrigued by the plot description. What I got was something completely unique.

If you look over the plot, you have basically read this book. Which makes it a little disappointing for me…

The book itself is listed as being 208 pages. That's a fair description, what you may not know is that you only have half that amount of pages in content and maybe even a fourth of that because each page only has a couple of paragraphs listed on each page. The description on Goodreads even tells you this, although you may think it's part of the plot devices somehow; "After his dad commits suicide, Will tries to overcome his own misery by secretly helping the people around him in this story made up of one hundred chapters of one hundred words each."

It doesn't necessarily detract from the plot, in this instance I think it may even enhance the overall feel of the story. I was, however, expecting a gripping YA novella about this kid and his friend. That's not exactly the right way to think of it and not exactly wrong either.

The author packs a lot of punch into the few pages they have. No word is extraneous and everything has a purpose. It was nice to read about a little bit of beauty in what is an otherwise awful situation. I admit that I teared up a time or two. Overall it's an enjoyable read and definitely a fast one.

This book is possibly the worst. Just, the worst. It's hard to figure out where to start with this review because I have entirely too much to say.

I understand where the author was trying to go with this, but all she managed to do is highlight the toxicity of fandom in general.

From the very beginning, we meet Claire. She's a superfan of the show Demon Heart. She's picked up on what she believes is an attraction between the two male costars of the show and has become convinced that the characters are gay and in love. Claire writes a lot of slash fanfic of the characters and is excited when she finds out that the team from the show are going to be making an appearance at her "local" comic convention.

From there, Claire bullies and cries her way into contrived situations and somehow "finds herself" in the process. I could go into all the problems with the plot, the writing, or even the unlikableness and terrible behavior of the protagonist. Instead I'm going to end up talking about fandom and its pitfalls. If you find that you agree with what I'm saying, I think you'll know that you want to avoid this book.

For any of us that are super fans of literally any show, movie, or general fandom; by now you know about the toxicity that exists. Just recently there were articles regarding the actress Kelly Tran deleting her social media pages because of hateful and bigoted vitriol by a bunch of grown-up-children because she dared to be a POC in a fandom film. There is a faction of the bowels of the internet that are unable to separate fiction from reality and are determined to foist their view of their fandom on you whether you like it or not.

These people are the fan fic writers. The angry message board commenters. The ones who sit there and type out angry reactions to the slightest faux pas by casual fans. These are the people who feel as though they own fandoms because they got there first. I've read various op eds over the years about how this group feels as though they own these fandoms because they were persecuted for liking these things for so long. Now that geek culture has gone mainstream, they still are holding on to that anger and awfulness instead of embracing the newbs and making new friends. The superiority and snobishness that drips from every condescending word is apparent in most of their interactions. Now they have the power in knowledge and they work to tear down anyone who dares to think they might know a little something about the chosen fandom. In case you haven't connected these dots…THIS is the chosen protagonist of the story.

Bitter? You bet I am. I came into geek culture late in life. I didn't know that there was this entire community of geeks and nerds who loved all these awesome things. Luckily I found a few awesome people to help me navigate the waters, but I learned quickly and the hard way not to bother with online forums.

In this novel, Claire decides that she knows more about the show and the characters than the actual creators, writers, and actors. You know, the people who actually handle the overall creation of the TV show. This plot is loosely based on an interaction that occurred during a Supernatural convention in which Jensen Ackles brushed off a fan who asked about the context of Dean and Castiel's relationship.

This book has the vehicle in which to truly explore Queer issues and it's role (or lack thereof) in fandom. It has the vehicle to bring people in. Instead Claire spends the entire time forcing her agenda instead of just enjoying the thing in the first place. She crosses so many ethical lines it's downright absurd and I'm pretty sure she broke a law or two in the process. She's wholly unlikable.

If you're looking for a geek centered romance, I'd recommend Geekerella instead. Heavy on the romance, but a far better choice than this tragic representation of fandom. You can check out my review of it here:

Anyone hoping to feel the magic of You or even its slightly less awesome follow up Hidden Bodies is going to be sorely disappointed by Providence.

If you're like me, you were blown away by You and you fell in love with Kepnes' depth of character and ability to get inside an obsessive mindset. Having an unreliable and murderous narrator was a bold choice that paid off in spades. So when I received an advanced copy of Providence for this review I was incredibly excited. I hate to admit that I was underwhelmed.

Providence centers around childhood friends John and Chloe. When John is kidnapped and disappears for years, Chloe is left bereft. Side note worth mentioning, this book is so forgettable that I had to go back and look up the main character's names again even though I just finished it last week. When John comes back years later his mysterious departure and now has some sort of strange powers that make him a danger to anyone he cares about…including the one girl who never forgot him.

What follows is a cat/mouse game in which Chloe and John avoid each other and try to find each other over and over again. They try to move on with their lives, but they can't. There's also a side story about a detective who starts putting together a pattern of deaths involving John.

****************SPOILERS START HERE********************

I was incredibly disappointed by this novel for multiple reasons, not the least of which was the issue with John's "powers". There is no resolution to this plot point. You won't find out where they come from or why he has them. This novel would have been better served either going all in on the powers he has, or removing them from the plot altogether. There would have been a vastly more fulfilling novel if the author had just explored the ideas and emotions behind a teenage boy being kidnapped and returned years later. It's almost as if the editors said to Kepnes…"Heeeey, know what would make this appeal to the YA crowd? Give the dude powers, yeah! That's the ticket! They'll eat it up, see." I'm hoping you heard that in the old noir detective style voice that was in my head when I typed it.

Another disappointment with the novel is the use of social media. Where You was adept at portraying what it must be like to stalk someone, Providence uses it without emotion. I had a hard time believing that even with everything standing between the characters, that they couldn't have managed a relationship via video chat. People are Catfished every day with less interaction.

I was also upset at the amount of wasted time. I understand that for many romances to be palpable there's got to be at least a little wasted time with the protagonists, but these two waste literally the entire book. It was infuriating. Follow that up with such an ambiguous ending and I was just overall unhappy with the novel in general.

Honestly, I'd skip this one. Either find something else to read entirely or go back and read one of Kepnes's other novels. You'd be better off.